My Name is Margaret

﻿Maya Angelou’s story “My name is Margaret” is full of negativity and hatred towards Mr. and Mrs. Cullinan. Margaret begins her story by pointing out the differences between the white and black lifestyles. “While white girls learned to waltz and sit gracefully with a tea cup balanced on their knees, we were lagging behind, learning mid-Victorian values with very little money to indulge them.” Education is one the key differences that is pointed out in the beginning of this short story. “During my tenth year, a white woman’s kitchen became my finishing school.” Margaret as well as many other blacks during this time found herself in a situation that was unlike the rest of americans. Slavery was over, yet she needed to work. Working would become her schooling. The tone of this story is full with disgust and hatred. Margaret constantly refers to Mrs. Cullinan as “poor woman” as if Margaret feels bad for this lady, yet there isn’t any pity in her tone at all. Margaret is disgusted by Mrs. Cullinan’s home, especially the fact that it is too large and too particular for a household with only two members. While the disgust of Mrs. Cullinan is bright as light, the disgust of her husband is left to one paragraph, or so it reads. Margaret rarely mentions Mr. Cullinan,yet when she does they are short paragraphs, with only a sentence or two describing him. This is where you can see the disgust of Mr. Cullinan. She mentions how he has two daughters from a colored woman, but they weren’t ever around. Margaret learns that she knows his two daughters (Coleman Sisters) very well and soon realizes why they don’t look like their mom at all, and also why Mr. Coleman was never mentioned or seen. There was no Mr. Coleman, just a Mr. Cullinan. Margaret wanted her feelings towards Mr. Cullinan to stand out,which is why she hardly mentioned him while ranting about Mrs. Cullinan. Mr. Cullinan had taken advantage of the Coleman girl’s mother and then left her to serve with the kids. In...

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... We as people identify with our name in many ways. Our name is what connects us to our family, and we are the image that is associated with our name. In the passage, Mrs. Viola’s friend sees a lack of importance in calling Margaret by her actual name, as “that may be, but the name’s too long. I’d never bother myself. I’d call her Mary if I was you.” In doing this, “Old Speckled-Face,” as Margaret called her, attempts to dehumanize her and exemplifies the standard way of thinking of the common, rich white people in the 60’s and 70’s. In seeing Margaret’s name as something that doesn’t matter, being that her name is who she is, she therefore makes Margaret ‘not matter’. The author’s indignation toward her employer for impertinently renaming her substantiates Marguerite’s strong sense of self-pride, now revealed in the face of racism. Angelou’s reaction to her Mrs. Viola’s renaming exhibits the subtle forms of resistance that blacks could use. In a sense, Mrs. Cullinan’s kitchen served as a finishing school for Margaret because black girls “were given as extensive and irrelevant preparations for adulthood as rich white girls shown in magazines.
The difference was that many white girls learned about more high-class habits, while black girls learned housekeeping. In being a servant in Mrs. Cullinan’s kitchen, she learns the...

...Madison
Premoli
13 September 2012
1st period
MyName Is Margaret
Investigate and discuss the narrator’s attitude shifts as she achieves her identity.
In the introduction of the essay, the narrator is informative of how it was like to live in that specific time period. Margaret differentiated between a white girl and a black girl growing up in the south. Maya Angelou claimed, “While white girls learned to waltz and sit gracefully with a tea cup balanced on their knees, we were lagging behind, learning the mid-Victorian values with very little money to indulge them” ( Angelou 11-14). White girls’ goals in this time period were to grow up and get married to a guy that has money. Black girls’ goals were to grow up with the education needed to be able to support their family.
In this time period it was a huge issue that blacks’ weren’t treated fair. Most white women didn’t speak their true opinions, they normally followed in the steps of the socialites of their town. Blacks’ mainly didn’t speak up because they were scared of the outcome it would bring upon them and their family. This caused the society to not change much. Throughout years people started to get fed up with how things were and started to try to make a change.
Margaret grew up learning how to work for a white woman. She learned all the necessities of keeping a house upright. She learned how to...

...Stefanell
Vaccaro, ENC 1102
7/10/13
Reaction to, “Myname is Margaret”
This story reminds me of a sad time in our history when the people of this nation thought they could own another human being. I would like to say this time has passed, but we are barely able to hang on. We may have a bi=racial president, but there is still racism among the old south. Margaret was only a child and she was being groomed to be the help. It may have been on different scale verses working in a field, but all the same. She talks about her experience and recalls the events in such a way that you are taken back and can almost see what she is describing. I love the names in the essay, Miss Glory having been named Hallelujah. I felt horrible when Mrs. Cullinan changed her name to suit her friends. I do not even change the names of my animals. If they are named already it seems inhuman to call them by a different name. Mrs. Cullinan wanted to change Margaret to make it shorter, but oh my goodness is that ever degrading. The first time Mrs. Cullinan attempts to call her Mary, Miss Glory asks, “WHO? “ … this is funny to me because she is trying to defend Margaret and express as much sympathetic dislike for the name change. Miss Glory even says she felt sorry for Margaret.
I liked how Angelou...

...MyName Is Margaret.
“MyName Is Margaret” written by Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou is novelist, poet, playwright, actress, composer, and singer. Actual name is Marguerite Annie Johnson born in 1928.
People identify with our name in many ways. Our name is what links us to our family; History and we are the image that is associated with our name. In the outline of the essay, the narrator is informative of how it was like to live in that precise time period. Margaret distinguished between a white girl and a black girl developing up in the south. Mrs. Viola’s friend sees a lack of importance in calling Margaret by her actual name, as “that may be, but the name’s too long. I’d never bother myself. I’d call her Mary if I was you.” In doing this, “Old Speckled-Face,” as Margaret called her, attempts to dehumanize her and epitomizes the standard way of thinking of the common, rich white people in the 60’s and 70’s.
A name for me represents history. Too many names are lost and/or changed because someone’s past, someone’s culture, someone’s story was “too long” to remember, and that just really makes me dejected. It makes me sad to know that people lost so much, especially their names. Maybe that’s why I take my...

...“MyName is Margaret”
Our name identifies us in many ways. It connects us to who we are and connects us to our family. White people have had the power to express what identifies them best and black people really never got the chance to experience what identity is, it has always been prearranged for them. This passage’s main point is about identity and breaking out of the silence that the whites have had over the black people, about taking control and breaking the norms.
In this story, Margaret is angry with the fact that Viola Cullinan calls her by ‘Mary’ just for her convenience because Margaret is too long.
“Twenty years. I wasn’t much older than you. Myname used to be Hallelujah. That’s what Ma named me, but my mistress gave me ‘Glory,’ and it stuck. I likes it better too.”
-Miss Glory
Miss Glory, the cook, mentions that her real name was ‘Hallelujah’ and that her mistress gave her the name ‘Glory’ and it stuck. It stuck for twenty years but claims she likes that name better anyway and “It’s shorter too.” This shows how much power the whites had over the blacks. They were a much more superior race.
Margaret mentions Mr. Cullinan only briefly. Margaret states “Her (Mrs. Cullinan) husband remains, but in my memory, undefined. I lumped him with all the...

...The struggle to find one's identity is a universal theme that is especially prevalent in Chaim Potok's novel, MyName Is Asher Lev. As an Orthodox Jew, Asher's gift for art is looked upon very unfavorably. Despite the disapproval of his community and father and the pain his art causes those around him, he pursues his passion and must find a way to reconcile the conflict between his religious identity and his individual identity.
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Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth.
Although art is not expressly forbidden, Orthodox Jews have "a longstanding abhorrence of anything that even smacks of idolatry" (Megilligan n.p.), and art is viewed by Orthodox Jews as...

...Asher Lev Essay: Minor characters are central to our understanding of any text. Analyse their significance in MyName Is Asher Lev.
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